Recently, Tom Morello gave an interview with Keith Obermann on the Occupy movement that has sprung up in the United States, Canada, and across the Atlantic. The musician behind the Nightwatchman and guitarist for Rage Against the Machine spoke of the importance of music and culture in political change, saying that in America, “every successful, progressive, radical or revolutionary movement this country has ever seen has had a great soundtrack.”

As every dorky history student knows, justification for the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam was largely based on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. As every dorky history student probably also knows, there is a really good chance that the whole incident was made up. Or at the very least the wrong information was getting filtered to LBJ.

This week, 1175 pages of previously classified transcripts from 1967+1968 were released. The documents show senators from the Foreign Relations Committee questioning if the wool had been pulled over their eyes in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964. (more…)